Month: November 2015

Who could have predicted this? Except the Devas. The Gods who must be chortling into their Somras.

I am indestructible. My knowledge surpasses all, my physical prowess is second to none. I have the nectar of immortality. I have been a fair and just ruler. My people want for nothing. They suffer no deprivation. Yet, with the foresight I have been blessed with, I know that all this will mean nothing one day. One day, I will be made a mockery of. Grotesque effigies of me will be burnt publicly to celebrate the defeat of evil. I will come to represent all that is wicked, greedy, arrogant and worthy of destruction.

They will forget that I am the Maha Brahman- called thus by their own Lord.

I wait in solitude for Death to arrive. It frightens me not a jot. For I have chosen this fate for myself. In abducting the beauteous queen I have provided enough incentive for the Lord to bring his army here to my land, and for me to be felled by his hand. It is the only way for me to gain Moksha- an emancipation from this cycle of death and rebirth.

The queen sits in her own solitude in the garden. I captured her as a means to an end. Yet I find that it is I who is enraptured of her. She, who waits so patiently for her husband to rescue her. She, who waits for my defeat. Can she even guess at the trials that lie ahead of her? That she will have to walk through fire to prove her chastity. That she will be turned out, pregnant and helpless, on the accusation of a washerman. I treat her with respect and with dignity. She scoffs at my love, but someday she will recall that it is not I, but her own revered Lord that cast doubt on her virtue.

As dusk gives way to an inky night, I look up at the stars, and find that I am ready to leave this mortal coil. Whatever my legacy may come to mean, I will never be forgotten. For hundreds of years they will celebrate the return of the rightful King to his Kingdom by lighting diyas and distributing sweetmeats. But not before they mark my annihilation.

For I am Ravana, and the story of Rama and Sita and The Ramayana will not exist without me.